As a law firm with a focus on indecent exposure (IE) cases, we have been retained by countless men who were highly embarrassed to be facing an indecent exposure charge, or who have been contacted by the police about an alleged incident, and are freaking out as a result. To keep this article “real,” we’ll dispense with any notion that IE cases are somehow divided between men and women, because the simple fact is that the overwhelming majority of people charged with either indecent exposure or aggravated indecent exposure are male.
Perhaps the biggest question anyone has about indecent exposure is “why?” If the reader is facing one of these charges, he has probably asked that same question of himself, and may have been asked the same thing by other people, as well. As it turns out, the answer has huge implications for the outcome of any given case. The problem, however, is that there often isn’t a clear answer, and that’s where it becomes critically important for us, as the defense lawyers, to make sure that the court does not substitute its worst-case fears or suspicions in place of that.
The main concern in any IE case is that the person’s conduct will “progress” and that he will engage in more aggressive and/or predatory sexually delinquent acts. Most of our clients are rather shocked to hear that they’ll be looked at in that way, but the fact is, most sexual predators start out small and work their way up to more serious behaviors. However clinically sound or not these concerns may be in any given case, what’s more important is the simple fact that they do exist in the court system, and any proper defense must take that into account and work around it.